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Tuesday, September 06, 2011

POST #370: Random Observations

The following are a serious of miscellaneous thoughts and observations that I have recently posted on other sites or drunkenly scribbled into my notebook. Similarities to any persons, living or dead, is purely intentional:

1. No Ordinary Time Indeed

Back during the period between Election Day 2008 and Inauguration Day 2009, Barack Obama's handlers made much noise of the fact that the Prez-to-be was in the process of reading Doris Kearns Goodwin's recently released biography of the Lincoln administration, "Team of Rivals". As I remarked at the time, he was reading the right author but the wrong book. The book he should have been reading was "No Ordinary Time", her study of the years that Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt lived in the White House.

A phrase FDR liked to use on the campaign trail in 1932 and during the First Hundred Days of his administration was "Action - NOW". And it was always bold, decisive action. Nothing timid would do for my man Frankie. I surely hope that President Obama has read that book by now.

2, Political "Comedy"

A couple of days ago, at a rally for Sarah Palin in Indianola, Iowa, a "comedian" named Eric Golub went out on stage for the failed, ex-governor in order to warm up the tea-partiers who had come out en masse. He wasn't very funny. As a matter of fact he wasn't funny at all. His "act" - if that's what you want to call it - was beyond pathetic.

Did you ever notice that all successful political satirists and comedians always - ALWAYS - speak from a left-leaning point of view? There are very few conservative "humorists" out there. Other than Eric Golub the only other person I can think of is the nitwit that does the Mallard Fillmore comic strip (I can't even think of his name - not that that's very important). Neither of them are funny. Why is that? The answer is quite simple:

In order for political satire to work, it must be based on some essential truth. If the basis of one's humor is trying to convince people that old is new - that black is white and day is night - it's not going to play very well. That is why Jon Stewart and Stephan Colbert are so successful. That is also why you will never again hear the name "Eric Golub".

The late humorist Lewis Grizzard was a conservative - and very funny. But he wrote about the cultural aspect of being a "redneck". For the most part he wisely shied away from the subject of politics.

I'm not implying that conservatives aren't at times screamingly funny. They are. Very much so! The problem is that the humor is always unintentional.

3. Scheduling Conflicts

What the heck is wrong with this president? Sometimes I get the feeling that the poor guy is tone deaf politicall­y. Why he would want to schedule an address the to congress at the same moment the GOP presidential hopefuls are having their debate is anyone's guess. Michele Bachmann said that Speaker Boehner did Obama a favor by forcing him to reschedule­. They were the only true words that have come out of her mouth since the primary season began.

Barack Obama should not want to deflect attention from the Republican debates. In fact he should hope and pray that EVERY American watches it! This country needs to take a gander at the collection of kooks, criminals and half-wits that now comprise "the party of Abraham Lincoln". Thank goodness for quotation marks.

I can't wait for that debate. That oughtta be a scream!

4. Married Priests

At St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church in Goshen, NY, the first major pedophile scandal materialized in the early nineties. The priest in question, “Father Ed”, had been molesting boys in their early teens for a couple of years. To say that the parishioners were traumatized by this would be an understatement. They were devastated. Then something wondrous happened….

Father Ed was defrocked and eventually sent to prison. He was replaced by Father Trevor Nichols. Father Trevor had been an Anglican priest in merrie olde England when he converted to Catholicism. On becoming a Catholic he was transferred to Saint John’s -WITH HIS WIFE AND TWO DAUGHTERS! A married priest! WITH TWO KIDS!

You wanna hear the punch line? The little parish did not implode. The sun did not fall from the sky. Huge cracks did not appear in the earth’s surface. In fact, it was nice having them. I became good friends with this extraordinary family. They were – and are to this day – deeply beloved by the people of St. John’s.

Allowing priests to marry would transform the Catholic Church. Having Father Trevor, his wife Marian and their two lovely daughters Catherine and Hannah in their midst certainly transformed the people of St. John’s.

The Vatican really needs to rethink their stand on this matter.

5. FASHION ADVISORY

Note to all the young guys who like to wear their belts well below their wastes: Have you ever seen a photograph of you father wearing one of those silly, powder-blue, polyester leisure suits that were all-the-rage in the early-mid seventies? In hindsight they look kinda stupid, don't they? A little word of advice: Don't pose for any photos that your kids might discover forty years from now. You'll thank me.

6. Rick Perry? Can it be???

With each passing year it's getting easier and easier to question the intelligence of the American people. Look at the latest polling from the GOP primary voters: Rick Perry is leading the pack by a wide margin. Another corrupt, reactionary, half-witted cowboy from the Texas governor's mansion living in the White House? Could it possibly be that we're about to venture down this road again? I wouldn't doubt it for a minute.

Of course as a guy who makes his name these days commenting on the corruption and stupidity of American politics and politicians, I can only say that such a turn of events would be a very sweet deal for yours truly. You say you plan on voting for Mr. Rick next year? Go for it, dude!

7. Still more proof of Sarah Palin's shallowness

When telling the story of how she was confronted at one point with news reports that she and her husband Todd were going to divorce, one would think (indeed one would hope) that she would offer for the reader's contemplation a heartfelt description of her abiding love for her husband; how their union could not be tossed aside like some disposable camera - that she and Todd took their wedding vows seriously. No, there was none of that....

"Dang, I thought. Divorce Todd? HAVE YOU SEEN TODD???"

TRANSLATION: If Todd gains twenty pounds, he's history.

Thirteen years into their marriage, Eleanor Roosevelt was confronted with her husband's affair with her social secretary (and distant relative of mine - I come from a long line of home wreckers) Lucy Paige Mercer. After contemplating divorce, it was decided that they would continue their union. Years later, she confided to her friend Joesph Lash, the reasons for saving their marriage. They were many and complicated. This, I can assure you, was not one of those reasons:

"Dang, I thought. Divorce Franklin? HAVE YOU SEEN FRANKLIN???"

In an article that was posted online this morning on the website Religion Dispathces, a very good writer named Anthea Butler lamented the fact that it is obvious Sarah Palin won't be going away anytime soon. If you will be kind enough to allow me, I would like to propose a toast:

Here's to Sarah Palin; may she never - EVER - go away.

I am going to go out on a limb here: No woman since Eleanor Roosevelt has done more to further the cause of progressive politics in the United States of America than our gal Sarah.

Isn't life strange?

Tom DeganGoshen, NYtomdegan@frontiernet.net

AFTERTHOUGHT:

The photograph at the top of this piece is of the author of this disgusting commie swill and his beloved niece Marieke Pennings, taken at the Bob Dylan concert, Bethesda Woods (original site of the Woodstock Concert) Friday, August 12, 2011. Thank you, John Galdi, for that photo!

SUGGESTED READING:

No Ordinary Timeby Doris Kearns Goodwin

In my humble opinion, this is the finest and most instructive (HINT, HINT, BARACK!) book ever written on the Roosevelt White House. If your neighborhood (like almost every other neighborhood in the United States) has no independently-owned bookstore, here is a link to order it from the nice folks over at Amazon.com:

45 Comments:

I've noticed the odd absence of humor in conservatives. Most humor has its base in an acute awareness of and empathy with the human condition--literally, there's a choked off little sob somewhere in every good joke. Also, comedy laughs best at itself, pokes itself in the ribs.

When I'm profiling the Republican party, I just don't locate those capacities in them.

So-called conservatives have the general opinion that their money should only be spent by themselves and only for themselves. In other words they are at their core greedy and un-empathetic. Most humor has at it's core a feeling of "been there" that makes it familiar and safe to laugh at. Go ahead, make some ironic point about Charlie Manson, "and then he sent out his hommies to slit some throats!" See? Not funny at all, no empathy with Charlie. But if you say, "Well, I don't know where you've been but I'm certainly glad you won first prize!" You have to laugh, I mean, who hasn't had a morning trying to figure out where you got that hickey or why your underwear is on the outside of your pants? It's funny! But Cheney is as funny as Nosferatu and Bachman and Palin only generate the kind of laugh you hear at a haunted house ride- a little bit scared. If you can't laugh at yourself, if you can't enjoy somebody cracking a joke at your expense, which is true but funny anyway... you are probably a conservative or think you are. To the new batch of conservatives jokes have mutated into race based insults and snarky comments. Snarling has replaced laughter, threats have replaced conversation. I really think Obama was placed in office by Dick Cheney and Company to act as cover while they dismantle every democratic accomplishment left in America. I don't think Dick would voluntarily leave while he still had his fangs deep in our neck. He thinks the joke is on us, which is why it's not funny. Like you said, when black is white and lies are truth, laughter becomes tears and jokes become a means of hurting people.

I wish I could think of a funny closing line but I read the news today, oh boy! I don't think they will ever let go and I am running out of short hair to twist! There's only a couple things left to twist down there and I am fond of everything I have. What to do, what to do? Pull some random black millionaire out of the hat and stick him in the White House and everybody goes back to sleep? No, they are sleepy, yeah, but not actually asleep per se, more like passing out from lack of air. The assholes in charge have sucked all the oxygen out of the room and I need to light a joint!

The next election is already planned out, the "winner" selected and the party favors bought and stuck in the closet. I can't wait to see who Cheney has chosen to be our next house boy. Maybe a Latino? No, I'm thinking white meat this time, maybe a Mormon.

Political "comedy"??? Not from conservatives. My very wise mom always said that to possess a sense of humor one must have intelligence. The Republicans of today have neither.

Which brings me to Lewis Grizzard. Yes, he was a conservative of the old school. Were he alive today, no doubt he would be considered a nasty ole liberal.

I hope your lovely niece appreciates what an exceptionally bright uncle she has, therefore the owner of a first rate sense of humor, and the fact that he's the numero uno writing talent around these parts.

Here/here/hear/hear....Leslie. I remember the genius of Lewis Grizzard very well...and the label "conservative" (today's) would not fit him at all. ;o)Political satire belongs to those who UNDERSTAND parody...and that ain't anyone on the right. They are too busy "climbing".

I too could not figure out why Obama would have even considered giving his jobs speech at the same time as the Republican debate, but I think you inadvertently gave the exact reason in questioning his sanity.

By "attempting" to schedule his speech at the same time, he actually brought more attention to the debate, thus ensuring that more people will be watching it than would have otherwise.

I guess as a conservative I don't think the following is funny, then again, maybe that's just me.

"The real unemployment rate actually rose in August, according to the Department of Labor, belying the fact that the official unemployment rate, 9.1 percent, remained flat while the economy did not create any new jobs on net last month.

According to the data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, real unemployment rose to 16.2 percent in August, up from 16.1 percent in July and tying the 2011 record set in June.

The real unemployment rate is comprised of three different measures of the labor force that more accurately reflect who is really unemployed, as opposed to the official unemployment rate, which merely measures those who told the government they were unemployed and looking for work in the past month."

Or maybe as a conservative it's cause we are getting ready to celebrate the 10th anniversary of 9-11?

Could it be as a conservative being called a SOB by Jimmy Hoffa, and a barbarian by V.P. Biden isn't funny to me? In light of the shooting in Tucson, AZ of Rep. Gabby Giffords earlier this year and the failed Operation Fast and Furious, maybe I'm just a little nervous about this “New Tone Of Civility In Public Discourse" the the head of the DNC, Debbie Wasserman Schultz was calling for?

Maybe I can't find the humor in more Americans not having health care now than before Obamacare was made the law of the land? gallup.com/poll/149321/Texas-Mass-Health-Coverage-Extremes.aspx

Maybe it's because in 2008 then Senator Obama won the endorsement of the Teamsters AFTER privately telling the union he supported ending the strict federal oversight imposed to root out corruption, according to officials from the union and the Obama campaign. Maybe that is an en example of the "Chicago Way of politics?

Nope, if progressives/liberals find any of this funny, maybe Tom's "drunkenly" condition is the one we need to take. Of course if the 50% of us who pay 100% of the Federal Income tax do this, then might be a short fall of dollars needed at budget time.

Kudos on your recommendation of "No Ordinary Time" by Doris Kearns Goodwin. This has been one of my favorite books since it first appeared in 1994

I was born on 1934 and it was poignant to read on page 42 that on May 16, 1940: "Thirty-one percent of thirty-five million dwelling units did not have running water; 32 percent had no indoor toilet; 39 percent lacked a bathtub or shower; 58 percent had no central heating. Of seventy-four million Americans twenty-five years old or older only two of five had gone beyond the eighth grade; one of four had graduated from high school; one of twenty had completed college."

From 1935 to 1938 my mother (a single mom). sister, and I lived in a cottage in rural eastern Massachusetts where we could see the inside of the roof and the outer walls (no inside walls or partitions). We had no running water (a sink with a hand pump into a shallow well). We had no indoor toilet (an outhouse with a half moon cut in the door for light during the day and a kerosene lantern for night). We had no bathtub or shower (an oversized galvanized pail for a tub). We had no central heating (a single portable kerosene heater). We had no icebox or refrigeration.

My uncle had a job and lived with my grandparents so he was able to help them with their household expenses (my grandfather was disabled) and provide a small amount of money to us for food and kerosene. And food meant walking about three miles each way to the nearest store.

Looking back it is easy to say we were poor. But amazingly I never felt poor. It was like a year round vacation, except that it was really cold in the winter.

In 1939 my mother found a job and I was ready for first grade so we moved in with my grandparents who lived in a city four miles from downtown Boston. In a small three-bedroom apartment we had, from my perspective, my sister and me, my mother, aunt, and uncle, my grandparents, and one bathroom with running water, a full-sized tub, and a flush toilet. And we had central heating (coal fired). This was real luxury!!!

I was fortunate to grow up during that "No Ordinary Time." They were wonderful, wonderous, and perilous years.

Nowadays you can get into a condo far more comfy than what you grew up in without having to work thanks to that wonderful system of Socialism! Uncle Sam will pay your rent, medical, food, internet access, and cell phone minutes!

Obama's auntie is doing it with no shame:http://www.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/op_ed/view.bg?articleid=1230460

I've seen Dylan every few years. Always a different set with a new take on his songs. His band members are such accomplished pros. And it was fun to see him play with Tom Petty and the Grateful Dead back in the '80's.

I wonder why the radicals, who think they're the only ones who pay taxes, hate Obama so much. They are paying lower taxes than they did under Bush. Do they even know that? Probably not.

Harry from Mass, what is it with "Socialism" as a pejorative. We have a police department. Isn't that "Socialism?"

Perhaps you would rather that we let people starve as happened during the Great Depression.

If my uncle did not have a job or had children of his own, I cannot imagine how we would have survived.

1939 in Eleanor's words was truly "No Ordinary Time." Fortunately we had no ordinary President, which led to the wonderful, wonderous, and perilous times in which I grew up.

How about the GI Bill? We had 16 million people serving in the military during WW2. If we demobolized and said have a nice life we could have slid back into the Great Depression. I remember well there was a great fear that would happen.

Instead we had the GI Bill that allowed veterans to buy houses with virtually no down payment. We had the GI Bill that educated an undereducated generation that twenty-five years later sent men to the moon, and think of the technology fallout from that effort.

In the 1950's we started building a national interstate highway system.

Egads. Perhaps we should never have done all that because some people would call it "Socialism."

"I wonder why the radicals, who think they're the only ones who pay taxes, hate Obama so much. They are paying lower taxes than they did under Bush.(And what's wrong with that?)I guess it's not really about taxes at all. It's about who to hate."

You got that right Dave, the left hates the rich, who every that might be. It's all about class warfare, maybe the worst since the Russian Revolution in 1917.

Examples of this hate can be found on your blog, and Ed Schultz's blog daily. Hate for a group of people because of one thing, their perceived wealth and how they came about it. Hate for the 50% of Americans who foot the entire federal income tax bill, by the other 50% who pay nothing. You would think the non-payers would be grateful for what has been given to them through the taxes paid by those who pay the entire bill now!Instead, they want more!

The irony of this is if you took every dollar from every American who pays federal income tax, there would not be enough to pay off the debt. So lets go into debt some more to the tune of a purposed $300,000,000! After 1st stimulus failed, lets spend some more on the same ideas as were on the 1st stimulus. Sounds real smart to me.

Hating anyone who pays federal income taxes is now expressing the hate crime of the Times of Obama.

i agree with JTF, stop trolling, and go back to your censored blog! (No comment for you on my blog if you don't agree with me, says Dave Dubya).

since we are discussing the benefits of Socialism, and one of top ones always mentioned is the US Postal Service, does anybody know what we can do to stop the profuse bleeding of it? it seems the solution is to have the taxpayers just "Lean Forward" and pull the wagon harder to fund that "progressively run" institution!

Hey, don't take me back to the 'good old days' before socialism (?) was introduced by that -gasp - liberal FDR. I lived through it and it was no picnic watching widows lose their homes to those grasping rich guys or watching grown men cry because they couldn't feed their families.

The horrors of the Depression were what you get when you let the Corporations run the country. They have no sense of humor or decency. Give this 86 year old dame a caring government over a rapacious private sector anytime. But the facts are, we do not have socialism. It's still a democracy. Labels mean nothing when you don't understand the definition.

I believe the thread is more about the perceived lack of humor in conservatives, which I have to strongly agree. Not only is humor deficient in the make-up of conservatives, but so is heart, wisdom and empathy. These are all the stronghold of people of a liberal bent; not conservatives. Conservatives are devoid of all these. They're, instead, narcissistic and shallow, and take only the attitude of "what's in it for me?"

Mort Sahl had his charms, back in the day; of course it was a different day!

I most enjoyed an interview he did once--it may have been on The Mike Douglas Show--when he said the sitcom Family Ties was hilarious because it was not just all too realistic a reflection of actual trends (i.e. the Reagan-worshipping offspring of hippie parents), but a vindication of his warning to LSD-quaffing friends of his that their kids would be mutants!

I found this the other day and it shows the tax rates through the years from 1919 to today. One thing that is common from 1929 to today is that WE THE PEOPLE pay more than the rich which is half of what we paid then and what we pay today.

regular Joe in 1929 24% rich joe in 1929 12.5%

regular Joe today 40% rich Joe 2011 20%

http://top-federal-tax-rates.findthebest.com/directory/d/1919

I also noticed that this nation was progressing when all the tax burden was shared. Go ahead and compare those years of progress to what we have today.

And for those who claim only 50% pay taxes you are not adding in the tax on gas, phone services, utility services clothes and any other purchase made. The issue is that most of the regular Joe's income goes to survival while the rich Joe can spend it on the same things but still have some left over to buy more crap, that the regular Joe can not.

Tom, not to change the subject, but have you never considered the idea of a third party? If so, do you think that the time is right? I'm aware that the Green Party is still active, but for whatever reason, they can't seem to get any momentum going (perhaps a lack of leadership?)

I changed my mind: I'm happy to change the subject. I can't stand reading "war of the wits". Seems like they post just to see themselves one up the other. Thanks

Midwestgirl 1960I went to the link you provided and surprise, you didn't tell the entire story in your post. Nice try at class warfare spin, in an attempt to support this next wave of tax and spend but you get the big FAIL.

Lets try to tell the entire story.

1917 the HIGHEST tax rate was 67% on regular income $2,000,000 and over. Capital Gains top rate was 67%

1921 the HIGHEST tax rate was 73% on regular income $1,000,000 and over.Capital Gains top rate was 73%

1931 the HIGHEST tax rate was 16.3% on regular income $100,000 (not a typo, that's what midwest girls source reports)and over. Capital gains top rate was 12.5% for 31-'33.

1932-1935 the HIGHEST tax rate was 63%(!) on regular income $1,000,000 and over.Capital gains top rate was 31.5 for '34/'35.

1936-1939 the HIGHEST tax rate was 78% (!!!)on regular income $2,000,000 and over.Capital gains rate for 36-38 was 39%, for 39 it was 30%.

These are the top rates on regular income. How you can say "WE THE PEOPLE pay more than the rich" is beyond belief.